Does NT have a speaker driver?

A. There is no NT speaker driver like there was in DOS, however this used to hammer performance and it is better to buy a cheap soundcard.

The very nature of this driver prohibits its use. A preemptive multitasking operating system will not allow enough CPU cycles to generate the sound. The sound is generated by pulse with modulation which requires 100% of CPU time while the sound is being played. Sound cards offload this to their DAC chips

Discuss this Article 2

Anton Krug (not verified)

on Jul 4, 2003

I have Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP3 without soundcard and i need to have som Sound Card Driver, because i need to run some programs that are requires sound card, i don't need to hear something, only i need to run this programs.